Study Of The Literary Spirit Of The Early Han Political Essays

Represented by articles of Jia Yi and Chao Cuo, the political articles in the early years of Han Dynasty play an important role in Chinese prose history and even in Chinese literature history as a connecting link. Most of the previous studies on political articles in the early years of Han Dynasty were concentrated on individual author and paid more attention to its ideological content, but neglected the exploration of its characteristic of unity. In fact, the whole era characteristic of the political articles in the early years of Han Dynasty is comparatively obvious, they share the same ideological content and similar literature characteristic and the writers in the early years of Han Dynasty have the similar personality too. According to current researches, researchers have studied the era background and ideological content sufficiently, and they have reached a comparative agreement, but it seems that they haven't done enough on its literature feature. So from a generalized literature concept, this thesis aims to probe into the literature spirit of political articles in the early years of Han Dynasty. It takes the political articles in the early years of Han Dynasty as a whole with works of Jia Yi and Chao Cuo as the focus.The thesis is divided into four chapters:Chapter one introduces the background and origin of the political articles in the early years of Han Dynasty. There are both inner and outer causes. As far as the social environment is concerned, in the early years of Han Dynasty the economy was depressed; the country had internal disorder and foreign invasion in politics and quietism and inaction in thought; the country was unified so the space in which the writers lived was quite large and their talking was relatively free, which stimulated writers' political enthusiasm and participation consciousness greatly. In respect of the literature internal development, the political articles in the early years of Han Dynasty is the inheritance of reasonable prose of pre-Qin, it absorbs the reasonable form and the excellent literary tradition. Having experienced the contending of a hundred schools of thought in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Period, along with the unification of Qin dynasty, especially the establishment of Han Dynasty, the political articles in the early years of Han Dynasty displays the characteristics of development from the multiplex shape gradually to the intensified shape and from theories to the concrete practice.Chapter two provides some researches about the esthetic style of the political articles in the early years of Han Dynasty. It presents positive and sublime esthetic style. In the aspect of language, the rhythm is sonorous and the use of sentence type is various, it presents powerful and unconstrained characteristic. In the aspect of structure, the quantity of the political articles is numerous and the space is very long, the structure of the articles is careful and rigorous and proof methods are nimble and diverse. Finally, authors often were full of sentiment of dedicating to the country when they were writing, so their political articles often had the sincere emotion and the powerful imposing vigor. This kind of positive esthetic style reflects the common esthetic trend of the writers' in the early years of Han Dynasty as well as the period esthetic pursuit of the early years of Han Dynasty as a very historical period.Chapter three provides the research on the personality spirit of the writers in the early years of Han Dynasty. The positive esthetic style demonstrates the life mood which the writers exert themselves. It shows the positive and vigorous personality charm under the universal background and the outstanding traditional humanist spirit of our country. Its concrete manifestations are: Shi Gong spirit, Nationalism and Patriotism, the sense of hardship. These three aspects are related with each other, and constitute the writers' personality charm.Chapter four discusses the change of the political articles in the early years of Han Dynasty and its influence to aftertime. Seeing from its development, in the mid and late period of Western Han Dynasty the articles sentiment imposing vigor is weakened, compared sharply with the articles which are heroic, free and powerful in the early years of Han Dynasty, while the articles in Eastern Han Dynasty are vigorous and modesty. At the beginning of Han Dynasty writers' spirit obtains the body again on the writers' body at the end of Han Dynasty's obviously. The political articles in the early years of Han Dynasty have the important status in Chinese literature history, they are playing the role which link the preceding with the following, Its influence manifests in descendant articles and descendant writers' personality.In sum, Shi Gong spirit, Patriotism and the sense of hardship of the writers in the early years of Han Dynasty and their political articles together constitute the literature spirit of the political articles in the early years of Han Dynasty.